TERRAFORMING TERRA
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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Earliest Writing

Whether this is first or not is dubious. Using symbols always had value in an organized society if only to mark ownership. Let us not forget that animals define ownership by urinating on boundaries. Once clay became available, they had a handy media that could be fired for transmission to our age.

A working script becomes a different matter. Initially they were used as memory aids with little attention to language structure as they would be interpreted by skilled speakers.

It is only when it becomes useful for material to be interpreted by strangers that this breaks down. Then sentence forms and grammar need attention and we begin to see increasing complexity. This happened in the Bronze Age and was most likely driven by the expansion of the metal trade into a world wide enterprise. Record keeping, language skills, and cross cultural narration would become common place.

Thus we see the emergence of precursors to the modern alphabet in this trade economy.

This trade economy also communicated with India during the Bronze Age, so it is no surprise that similar ideas floated back and forth in terms of creating symbol systems of some sort.

The first known examples of writing may have been unearthed at an archaeological dig in Pakistan.

So-called 'plant-like' and 'trident-shaped' markings have been found on fragments of pottery dating back 5500 years.

They were found at a site called Harappa in the region where the great Harappan or Indus civilisation flourished four and a half thousand years ago.

Harappa was originally a small settlement in 3500 BC but by 2600 BC it had developed into a major urban centre.

The earliest kno

wn writing was etched onto jars before and after firing. Experts believe they may have indicated the contents of the jar or be signs associated with a deity.

According to Dr Richard Meadow of HarvardUniversity, the director of the Harappa Archaeological Research Project, these primitive inscriptions found on pottery may pre-date all other known writing.

Last year it was suggested that the oldest writing might have come from Egypt.

Clay tablets containing primitive words were uncovered in southern Egypt at the tomb of a king named Scorpion.

They were carbon-dated to 3300-3200 BC. This is about the same time, or slightly earlier, to the primitive writing developed by the Sumerians of the Mesopotamian civilisation around 3100 BC.

"It's a big question as to if we can call what we have found true writing," he told BBC News Online, "but we have found symbols that have similarities to what became Indus script.

"One of our research aims is to find more examples of these ancient symbols and follow them as they changed and became a writing system," he added.

One major problem in determining what the symbols mean is that no one understands the Indus language. It was unique and is now dead.

Dr Meadow points out that nothing similar to the 'Rosetta Stone' exists for the Harappan text.

The Rosetta Stone, housed in the British museum since 1802, is a large slab of black basalt uniquely inscribed with the same text in both Egyptian hieroglyphs and Greek.

Its discovery allowed researchers to decipher the ancient Egyptian script for the first time.

The Harappan language died out and did not form the basis of other languages.

"So probably we will never know what the symbols mean," Dr Meadow told BBC News Online from Harappa.

What historians know of the Harappan civilisation makes them unique. Their society did not like great differences between social classes or the display of wealth by rulers. They did not leave behind large monuments or rich graves.

They appear to be a peaceful people who displayed their art in smaller works of stone.

Their society seems to have petered out. Around 1900 BC Harappa and other urban centres started to decline as people left them to move east to what is now India and the Ganges.

This discovery will add to the debate about the origins of the written word.

It probably suggests that writing developed independently in at least three places - Egypt, Mesopotamia and Harappa between 3500 BC and 3100 BC.

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About Me

18 years old, having cleaned out my HS library, I concluded the only ambition worth having was becoming a great genius. An inner voice cheered. Yet it is my path I have shared much to the Human Gesalt. Mar 2017 - 4.56 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM. Sep 2010 -My essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in Relativity. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data, record impressions, interpretations and to introduce new insights to readers.